


where is your boy tonight

by SummerFrost



Series: Suitehearts [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (Mentions Of) Canon-Typical Violence, Coming Out, Dyslexia, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, dyslexic character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 03:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12786126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/pseuds/SummerFrost
Summary: “Eighty percent of your job,” Jake says, “is controlling Travis Nelson.”Eric Bittle takes a job with the Seattle Schooners. Everything he's heard about Travis Nelson is, technically speaking, correct.





	where is your boy tonight

**Author's Note:**

> WOW HELLO
> 
> The Suitehearts universe is a collaborative project with blithelybonny and Verbyna. Nothing here would exist without them <3
> 
> Special thanks to polyamorousparson and agrossunderstatement, who beta'd the hell out of this before I shared it with the world <3
> 
> The title is, as always will be, from Fall Out Boy (Grand Theft Autumn, specifically).

**March 2018**

Bitty wakes up twenty minutes before his alarm goes off. The Seattle hotel room faces some sort of forest, and the rain is pattering softly against the window, picturesque. The scenery and the threadcount on the sheets are nicer than what his salary is about to be and it makes him uneasy.

He rolls away from the view he didn’t pay for and goes back to sleep.

 

~*~

 

The next time he wakes up, it’s after snoozing his alarm twice. He barely has time to shower and do his hair properly, and he’s debating whether or not he has time to stop by the continental breakfast downstairs before he calls an Uber when his phone rings with a call from an unknown number.

The decision is made for him; they sent him a car.

He gets to the Schooners’ arena and finds out the issue of breakfast is solved for him too, though, because he’s an actual staff member now and apparently they feed those around here. (They always fed Jack, but Bitty was always bringing pie. _ Please like me, please like me.)  _ The Schooners want Bitty to like them.

“Eric, so good to see you!” Pria Chabra greets him. “I hope you’re settling in okay.”

Bitty flicks muffin crumbs off his fingers before shaking her hand. “Oh, please, call me Bitty. And, well, I’ve only seen the break room so far, but breakfast looks great!”

“That’s great! If you don’t mind walking and eating, I’m gonna hand you off to Jake and Ella to get you started settling in.” Pria is already walking, so Bitty’s answer is sort of implied.

He follows, carefully holding his coffee mug so the freshly-brewed liquid doesn’t spill onto his hand. “Oh, sounds great!”

_ Great, great,  _ Bitty thinks.  _ Stop saying great. _

“Great!” Pria says. “So as you can see, all the offices overlook the practice rink down below, which makes it easy for you to get PR shots or track down players.”

Bitty looks over onto the ice, where the players are apparently doing warmups. It really is a great view, though he’ll be taking a few flights of stairs to actually get rinkside.

Pria continues, “You’ve got Melissa’s old office, which was a private space right here.”

They stop outside an office with almost entirely glass walls, which really seems like it would be nice in theory, but Bitty’s just thinking about how he’s a disaster of a person and everyone will see how disorganized he is, and he’s wondering if there’s a polite way of asking for a nice cave instead, but then Pria knocks on the door next to Bitty’s empty office and two people pop their heads out, so there goes that.

“Hey, guys,” Pria says. “Eric’s here. Can you guys start getting him set up while I take care of a few things?”

“Good to meet you, Eric. I’m Jake,” one of them says. He’s wearing a suit, which makes Bitty glad he played it safe instead of going for the sweater-and-khakis combo he abandoned on his bed. “You’re Melissa’s replacement, huh?”

Bitty shakes Jake’s hand and then shakes Ella’s too. “Um, it sure sounds like it!” He laughs and flashes Pria a smile and a wave as she bustles off without saying goodbye. “Honestly, I wasn’t really told what my specific role would be, so?”

Jake and Ella share a look.

Ella asks, “Uh, are you a hockey fan, Eric?”

Bitty suppresses his laugh this time. “Um, you could say that. I actually played in college with—”

“Oh, good,” Jake says. “Then you’ll love getting to know Travis.”

Bitty sort of doubts that, considering the last time Nelson’s name came up it was because he gave Jack a black eye. It was on the ice, and kind of hot, but still—not the best conversation starter.

Ella laughs like something is funny, though, which is odd. It’s not like Bitty  _ disclosed  _ his relationship (well, former relationship, but small details) with Jack to anyone, so she wouldn’t be laughing for the same reason he is.

“Um,” he asks, “sorry, what’s funny?”

All the look-sharing that’s going on without him is starting to get a little old.

Ella says, “I guess you don’t read our press.”

“I’m an Eastern Conference fan,” Bitty answers, fighting to suppress the terse edge in his voice. “But I did try to get a feel for—”

Jake unlocks Bitty’s new office and ushers them all inside. “Eighty percent of your job,” he says, “is controlling Travis Nelson. Good luck, buddy.”

Bitty puts his coffee mug down on an empty desk. “I’m sorry?”

“Yeah, see, when we all got hired we drew straws?” Ella explains like it’s an entirely normal thing to say. “And Melissa got Travis and she quit, and now you’re replacing her. Please don’t quit.”

Bitty thinks about what he’s seen of Nelson in the press. He’s loud, flirts with anything that moves, lives next door to one of the Benjamin brothers, maybe. He appears to have a bromance with Kent Parson, which actually might explain Jack’s black eye. He won a Stanley Cup with the Blackhawks and promptly got traded anyway.

“He’s one person,” Bitty says faintly. He can’t place why he’s suddenly glad he neither drank his coffee nor finished his muffin. “He’s—literally just a person?”

“Right,” Jake agrees. “And you’re thinking, like, ‘how bad could it be?’ right?”

Bitty’s thinking that this might be worth calling Jack over. He says, “Yes?”

“That’s the spirit!” Ella tells him. Her tone is thoroughly patronizing. “And anyway, Melissa left you her flashdrive with all her files and everything, so it’s not like you’re going in blind.”

She opens the top drawer of the desk and holds out said flashdrive for Bitty to take. He grabs it and suppresses the strange urge to dump it in his coffee.

“There’s information on our policies, social media account logins, and general strategies, too,” Ella continues. “We can give you the rundown on all the players and their preferences about interviews and press, but it’s probably all in Melissa’s notes, honestly.”

Jake adds, “She was really thorough.”

“Great!” Bitty says through all his teeth. “How about I start by looking through all of that, then, and I’ll let y’all know if I have any questions?”

Jake and Melissa agree and tell Bitty goodbye, inviting him to join them for lunch after his morning meetings. He tells them he’ll see how long it takes to get himself settled and shuts the door firmly behind them, then boots up the desktop computer Pria has set up for him on his desk.

He eyes his muffin while the computer loads. Scrubs at his face and pushes it farther away from him instead.

They created a login for him already, so he gets himself to the home screen and plugs the flashdrive in. It really is quite thorough, with everything from policy documents to planned promotional content through next month.

Bitty starts himself off easy, poking around the policy stuff and getting himself access to the team Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram on his work phone. He notices that they don’t have a Tumblr and drafts an email proposing that they create one; he’ll review it after lunch and send it to Pria, potentially adding details after he’s a bit more familiar with their system so far.

It’s really not as dramatic as Jake and Ella were making it sound, and he wonders if maybe they were trying to haze him or something. Mess with the gay guy, haha, very funny. Bitty reaches for his muffin and takes a bite, pleased to find that it’s pretty good, even if he could make better.

Then he scrolls a little further down the flashdrive and freezes.

The last file on the drive is a folder in all caps.  _ NELSON EMERGENCIES,  _ it says. Updated three weeks ago.

It coincides with the job posting. They’d called Bitty for a preliminary interview the next day.

Bitty gulps down a mouthful of coffee to wash away the dryness in his throat. It’s acidic. Tastes, inexplicably, like his mother dabbing blood away from his split lip.  _ Baby,  _ she says,  _ you can’t always be so difficult if you wanna get by. _

He’s about to click on the folder when Pria knocks on his door and lets herself in.

“Hey, Eric,” she says. “Practice is over and I thought I’d introduce you to Travis. Walk with me to the conference room?”

Bitty flicks his eyes over to the computer screen and back away. “Oh, sure. That sounds fine.”

He leaves the files pulled up and his coffee on the table.

 

~*~

 

Pria finds Nelly while he’s drinking the protein shake Harrison from nutrition shoved at him before morning practice. She’s wearing her “I’m begging you to cooperate, Travis, please God,” face, so that should be fun.

“Travis,” she says, “do you remember how Melissa quit three weeks ago?”

“Yeah,” Nelly says. It may have possibly been almost completely his fault, but it’s not like he’s gonna bring that up. “I was there.” He smiles at her.

“The position’s been filled,” Pria tells him, which is actually a surprise, because usually they do a little more vetting for these things. “I’d like you to meet him after practice.  _ Please  _ be welcoming, okay?”

Nelly stretches his grin, going for goofy and adorable. “I’m always welcoming.”

Pria, immune to whatever his face ends up doing, narrows her eyes. “Okay, correction. Be  _ normal  _ person welcoming. Can you just—can you give the guy like a week?”

Normal.

Nelly laughs. “A week before what?” he asks innocently.

They both know how she’ll answer once she figures out how to say it without, you know,  _ saying  _ it. He smiles at her patiently while she works on that, but then a door opens down the hall and Miley and Soup walk out from the trainers’ room, which means Pria is spared.

“Hey, guys!” Nelly finishes off his shake and bounds over to them, smacking Miley’s flank as he falls in step. “Ready to get your asses kicked at suicides?”

Miley looks at Nelly, eyes wide with betrayal. “Cap said we weren’t  _ running  _ suicides today!”

“Whoops!” Nelly laughs. “Surprise?”

The clicking of heels behind them tells Nelly that Pria’s heading off, back to her office or to whoever this new guy is to prepare him for Nelly.

Nelly wonders what it’s like to be the kind of person someone just meets.

 

~*~

 

They don’t skate suicides at practice, which Nelly knew was gonna happen, but it’s hilarious to watch Miley’s face the whole time and see how relieved and confused he looks by the end.

“You’re the worst,” he whines in the locker room, UnderArmor pulled halfway over his head.

“Your mistake was believing Nel over me,” Benji tells him. “Why would I lie to you?”

Nelly agrees, “Benji’s the worst liar. He giggles too much.” He’s checking the clock though, because he’s pretty sure he’s technically late for this meeting and he probably shouldn’t piss Pria off too much, but he’s also pretty sure she doesn’t want him to show up smelling like…whatever he smells like.

Socks, or something.

“I don’t giggle!” Benji argues, giggling like the adorable goober he is. “Stop sla—uh, slandering me.”

Nelly looks over at the showers but all the stalls are full, so like, apparently drowning his pits in Old Spice is gonna have to do.

“It’s a manly giggle, bro,” Soup assures Benji. “Don’t worry.”

Nelly mostly just smells like evergreen or pine tree or whatever this deodorant is supposed to smell like  _ and  _ socks now, but that’s probably better than before, so he throws on the first shirt he finds in his bag and ruffles Miley’s hair as he gets up.

“Dad, aren’t you coming to lunch with us?” Miley asks. He’s still shirtless and hasn’t showered, so it’s not like there’s a rush.

“Got a meeting,” Nelly tells him. “I’ll catch you guys there.”

Miley promises to text Nelly where they end up, so Nelly ditches his duffel in his stall to deal with later, heading out of the dressing room towards the conference room. Hopefully this new guy will be chill and won’t try to take Nelly’s Twitter away, because seriously, it’s not like Nelly won’t just make a new one, and it’s kinda sad how no one seems to expect that still.

So Nelly’s a little distracted thinking about that when he opens the conference room door, and also wondering how quickly he can bail on this thing so he can go to lunch and maybe sneak some fries or something without Benji giving him those disapproving puppy dog eyes that make it a little too hard not to touch him.

And then Nelly does a double-take at the blond guy sitting with his legs crossed in a rolling chair and says, “Shit,” and then, “You’re cuter in person.”

“Pardon me?” Jack Zimmermann’s boyfriend asks. His big eyes are extra wide and he looks nervous, like a rabbit from across the yard when Stanley goes in pointer-mode. “We haven’t—um. Have we met?”

Pria looks deeply suspicious. She’s probably afraid that Nelly’s found him on Grindr or something, which would honestly be way less awkward. “Travis, what’s happening?”

“Scones!” Nelly blurts, the first thing he can think of and not entirely untrue, because this is mostly the guy—fuck, his name’s like, got two “T”s or two “L”s or something else Nelly can’t spell—whose Twitter ends up in Nelly’s inbox alongside Parse’s snarky comments, but he  _ is  _ also the guy with the cool baking videos. He says all the ingredients and proportions out loud so Nelly doesn’t have to read anything. “I made your scones?”

Most of the tension bleeds out of the guy’s shoulders. He’s still all fidgety and flipping his phone in his hands though. “Oh,” he says, pointedly avoiding Nelly and turning to Pria. “I have a YouTube channel? That I, um, bake on.”

“Right,” Pria says slowly. She’s staring at Nelly even though he’s still staring at Zimmermann’s boyfriend and really doesn’t wanna know what her expression is right now. “Well, apparently this is only half of an introduction, but—Eric, this is Travis Nelson. Travis, Eric Bittle.”

_ Bittle,  _ okay. 

Nelly walks over to shake Bittle’s hand and corrects, “Call me Nelly. Cool meeting you, bro.”

Bittle has a firm handshake. Predictably, he looks completely un-starstruck when he says, “Nice to meet you, too.”

“Travis, as the face of our franchise, is the player you’ll be working with the most,” Pria explains to Bittle. “Like we talked about during the interview process, we want to craft an image that’s fun but professional. We’ve had some—trouble in the past…”

She says _ professional _ like a knife cutting through plastic. Nelly’s heard the entire speech before and he isn’t interested.

Bittle is listening intently, dark eyes fixed on her face and knuckles white on his phone, his thumb stroking over the power button rhythmically. His hands have callouses and smooth scars all over them and Nelly is staring but it’s the only place to look and his brain is saying  _ call Parse, call Parse, call Parse,  _ but he can’t. He can’t even send a text because it’s 12:37 pm here and 3:37 pm where Parse is in NYC, which means he’s asleep for his pre-game nap, and Nelly doesn’t know what he’d say yet anyway.

_ Eric Bittle is in Seattle,  _ he thinks first. And,  _ I don’t want Jack Zimmermann. _

_ Call Parse, call Parse, call Parse. _

“I think that all sounds manageable,” Bittle tells Pria. He started smiling at some point that Nelly missed. “Can we have the room, please? I think we should just get to know—”

“Of course.” Pria is halfway to the door before he even finishes talking. “Eric, just come find me when you’re ready to finish setting up your office.”

The door closes behind her and Bittle wrinkles up his nose and says, “Ugh, call me Bitty,” at the same time Nelly blurts, “Did Zimmermann get traded?”

Bitty flinches away, the wheels on his rolling chair scraping against the polished floor. 

He splutters, “I don’t—how do you— _oh, God,_ Parson,” and then goes quiet again, mouth hanging open. His phone is in his lap and his hands are still, even when his face changes and he asks, “Are you and him...?” like he’s sorry about it. Just like that, so fucking smart. Or maybe they’ve all been at it too long.

Nelly says, “Uh, fuck,” which isn’t supposed to be confirmation.

“It’s not like I’d tell anyone,” Bitty answers gently, because they both know it was. “I’d never.”

“You’re used to keeping your secrets, right?” Nelly jokes. He thinks it falls a little flat.

Bitty puts his phone on the table and pulls a knee up to his chest. “He didn’t get traded. I’m just here.”

“I’m sorry,” Nelly says. He is, mostly. Bitty doesn’t seem too fucked up over it but Nelly doesn’t know him nearly well enough to be sure.

Bitty smirks and does one of those half-shrugs. He hesitates and then asks, “How long’s it been?”

Nelly does the math in his head. “Like, almost four and a half.”

Bitty’s eyebrows go up. “Years?”

“Years,” Nelly confirms. His phone buzzes with a text from Parse.

There’s something complicated happening on Bitty’s face. He draws his other knee up and looks at his phone on the table, fingers twitching. “Are—?”

“I know,” Nelly cuts in. He stands up. “Like, whatever you think you could tell me, I already know. And he’s my person, and if that’s a fucking problem—”

“It’s not,” Bitty says quickly. “It won’t be.”

Nelly stares at him. Bitty is small—smaller than Parse—but he was an NCAA captain and he dealt with Jack Zimmermann for four years, and he looks whatever the opposite of intimidated is.

Nelly grins and makes for the door. “Cool. Guess I’ll see ya around, Bitty. Let’s grab brunch.”

“Brunch,” Bitty repeats. “Sure? I need to actually talk to you about Twitter—”

“Sounds great!” Nelly agrees absently, already dialing Parse’s number. “Call me later or whatever.”

He abandons Bitty in the conference room and strides down the hallway while the phone rings, then yanks open the door to an equipment room and ducks inside, not even bothering to turn the lights on.

“Hullo?” Parse answers while Nelly is sliding to the ground. His voice is all sexy and sleep-scratchy. “Babe?”

Nelly takes a breath and rips off the bandaid. “Eric Bittle is in Seattle.”

“Uh, hi to you too, unnecessarily dramatic,” Parse says. “Also— _ what?” _

Nelly rests his head against the wall. “He’s the new media manager. Pria hired him. Also, I accidentally outed us and he’s not banging Zimmermann anymore.”

“Are you okay? Fuck.” Parse’s voice is strained. “Fuck, what the fuck?”

Nelly promises, “I’m fine. You?”

“Fuck,” Parse repeats, which means no.

“I think Zimmermann’s okay,” Nelly says quickly. “Bittle, like, barely seemed fazed. I think it’s just, like—like they’re okay.”

Parse says, “He knows we’re fucking. He probably hates me. He could—”

“He won’t,” Nelly tells him. “Like, first of all he signed an NDA already, and second of all—he promised, okay? Like, really serious about it.”

“Oh, well if he  _ promised,”  _ Parse snipes sarcastically.

Nelly doesn’t answer him.

Parse’s breath comes in heavily through the speakers. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Nelly says. He closes his eyes. “You’re thinking about Providence.”

“Not as much,” Parse answers. “Thinking about you.”

That doesn’t mean Nelly won’t get a call from Rhode Island tomorrow, but that’s okay. He flips through his mental calendar and says, “You’re home in three, right?”

“Yeah, ‘till the fourteenth.”

“I’ll waylay with you after the Kings on Sunday,” Nelly says. “Prepare your liver.”

There’s an awkward hesitation like Parse might argue, but then he says, “Great. I—I’m really excited to see you.”

His voice is all soft and sincere and it makes Nelly’s chest hurt, so he smiles and answers, “Me too. Love you, man.”

“Love you too, Nel.” He pauses. “It’s like, almost one there? Go eat lunch, dude.”

Nelly laughs. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Good luck tonight, babe.”

Parse laughs too. ”Yeah, thanks. Call you after?”

Nelly stands up and brushes the dust off his track pants. “Duh. Benj might wanna Skype?”

“Sweet, I’m in.” Parse goes quiet for long enough that Nelly’s about to say goodbye and hang up, but then he hears, “Travis?” in that low, shy voice that always makes his eyes close so he can focus on the way it sounds.

“Yeah?”

Parse says, “Thank you,” and hangs up.

Nelly looks at the ended call and runs a hand through his hair before he opens the door, squinting at the sudden brightness of the arena lights. Miley texted him with the name of the restaurant while he was on the call, so he has Siri read that off to him and load it up on GPS.

A text from an unknown number that has to be from Bitty comes in while he’s packing up his bag; he has Siri read that too.

**_Bitty:_ ** _ “You can keep your Twitter if you tell me which clubs around here don’t suck” _

Nelly laughs and zips up his bag. It’s probably gonna be a shit show, but he also kinda hopes Bittle sticks around.

 

~*~

 

Bitty gets back to his office and sinks down into his chair, fingers pushing through his hair. He looks up at the monitor, still blaring the folder at him.  _ EMERGENCIES, EMERGENCIES. _

He thinks about opening it.

He thinks about the look on Nelly’s face when Bitty said  _ Parson. _

_ There was a file for me,  _ he thinks. George never showed it to him and if Jack knew about it, he never mentioned it.

He hopes it was kinder. He hopes he wasn’t a burden.

Bitty clicks on the folder and drags it into the recycle bin icon, then shreds everything inside it. Oops.

He right clicks and makes a new folder and calls it,  _ Long Term Strategies. _

“You’re a person,” he says out loud, to Nelly or Jack’s ghost or himself, he doesn’t know, it doesn’t matter, and pours his coffee into the trashcan next to his desk. It needed creamer. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you think Travis Nelson ruining your life could be right for you, check out [the OMGCP Suitehearts blog!](https://omgcp-suitehearts.tumblr.com/)
> 
> If you want to scream at me specifically, here's [my personal.](https://yoursummerfrost.tumblr.com/)


End file.
